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Tallahassee court case may be link in larger sexual slavery ring
By Hope Bastian
Last summer, as people in the U.S. gathered for Fourth of July celebrations of freedom and independence, law enforcement officers say that two young women unwittingly found themselves on a journey from freedom in their home country of Guatemala to sexual slavery in Tallahassee.
Documents at the Leon County Courthouse say that this is how the women’s journey began. Eva and Gladys (their names have been changed here to protect their privacy) had heard that maids in the U.S. earned better pay, so they left their impoverished homes in early July to go north and work as maids. Their new boss, who paid their transportation expenses up front, promised that within three months, the women would earn enough to pay him back. Then, he would give them legal U.S. residency papers and they would start earning money for themselves and their families back home.
In Guatemala, the young women had been strangers sharing a dream of leaving poverty-stricken hometowns to work in this country. But, according to documents at the Leon County Courthouse, where their accused trafficker now faces a spring trial, when the women arrived in Tallahassee, their dream twisted into a nightmarish reality.
The court documents describe the following. The women arrived at a townhouse in the affluent northeast side of Tallahassee on Friday, July 14. There, they were introduced to a man they called Jonathan, who would be their new boss. Details of their first day in Tallahassee are not available, but the documents say that Eva, Gladys and a third woman left the house that evening with Jonathan, who claimed to be taking them to a party. After an hour-long drive, they arrived at a trailer park.
Jonathan told Eva to stay in the car while he and Gladys went inside a trailer, where he handed her a blue purse. When she opened the purse, she allegedly found several condoms and a tube of KY jelly. It was then, she says, that Jonathan finally explained to her the true nature of the work that she had been brought to Tallahassee to do: She was going to have sex with the six men in the trailer to start earning money in order to repay her debt.
When Gladys refused, Jonathan threatened her, according to the report. Finally, fearing for her safety, she did his bidding. The men each had 15 minutes with her and were each charged $30. As soon as Jonathan and Gladys left the trailer, he told her to say nothing to the other women about what had happened in the trailer. Gladys was noticeably upset when they returned to the car but she dissembled, telling Eva that she was homesick.
The court report continues, stating that Jonathan then drove the women to another trailer where Jonathan ordered Eva to accompany him. He handed her the same blue purse in a replay of the previous scene. Eva protested, saying she was married and loyal to her husband. Working as a maid, not a prostitute, was what she had agreed to do.
The court documentation alleges that despite Eva’s protests, she was forced to sexually service eight men while Jonathan’s cell phone was ringing off the hook with men asking about the women. She overheard Jonathan say he had “two young pretty females” and there were other customers in line before the caller. Later, both women, in tears, were driven back to the northeast Tallahassee house.
The next morning, Eva and Gladys tried to warn the third woman about the true nature of their employment. But the third woman seemed unconcerned: It seemed that she already knew what her work would be. Eva and Gladys confronted Jonathan, telling him that they wanted cleaning work, but he responded that they had to work for him for three more months to pay off their debts.
The women claim that Jonathan said if they ran away he would find them and bring them back; if they tried to escape or go to the police they would be deported. The police wouldn’t believe them anyway, he said.
According to the report, Jonathan told all three women to get ready that night to go out again. Gladys begged to stay because her body had still not recovered from the previous night’s sexual activity. He took the other two women on a one- to two-hour drive to another trailer park where the report states that Eva was forced to have sex with seven men and the other woman with 13 before they were returned “home.” That night, the women heard Jonathan on his cell phone turning down more customers.
The women say that over lunch the next day, Sunday, Jonathan announced that all three of them would have to work that night. When they told him they had no clothes to wear, he offered to take them shopping. The third woman took him up on the offer, but Eva and Gladys said they preferred to stay home and wash their clothes instead. When he left the house, Eva and Gladys stuffed their belongings into plastic shopping bags, unlocked the back door and fled to a house across the cul-de-sac where a neighbor helped the women call the Tallahassee Police Department.
When the police arrived, Gladys identified the house where they had been held captive. A check of the city utilities account for the address brought police to Jorge Weimar Guerin Melchor. In a photo line-up, Gladys identified Melchor as the man they had known as Jonathan. A warrant was issued for his arrest. He managed to elude police until mid-October when he was apprehended in Gwinnett County, Georgia, northeast of Atlanta, and charged with two counts of kidnapping an adult for ransom or reward or shield or hostage, and two counts of human trafficking public order crimes; get labor or service by human trafficking. Law enforcement officers say they do not know the whereabouts of the third woman.
As that court documentation indicates, human trafficking and sex trafficking are not nightmares from the past or horrors that only occur in countries far beyond our borders. Sex trafficking is a reality in Florida today, even in “nice neighborhoods” in our proverbial backyard.
The U.S. State Department estimates that each year 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders. According to a report by FSU’s Center for the Advancement of Human Rights (CAHR), Florida is one of the three states that receive the majority of women and children trafficked annually into the U.S. The report suggests that trafficking is common in Florida because the state’s economy is built on two industries closely related to trafficking: agriculture and tourism.
According to Robin Thompson, an expert on human trafficking issues and the Director of the Human Trafficking Project at CAHR, “Trafficking in north Florida is not different than any other area. You find trafficked people in agriculture, but there is also sex trafficking, domestic servitude. You’ll find people working in homes and houses that are very isolated, as well as in restaurants and bars. Any place where there are labor contractors and the responsibility for hiring is contracted out without regulation you’ll find trafficking.”
According to Thompson, trafficking is both a state and federal crime in Florida although many people in local law enforcement don’t know about the extent of those laws. Trafficking victims who cooperate fully with law enforcement may have access to certain welfare benefits and special visas that allow them to stay in the country in order to help with the criminal investigation.
Thompson and other local professionals who do work nationally on trafficking have formed the North Florida Alliance to Combat Trafficking (NFACT). In June, NFACT held a training session for victim advocates and attorneys. “We were hoping to have about 50 people and we had 100, all kinds of people,” Thompson reports.
NFACT has the capacity to do more local trainings for social service providers, healthcare workers, teachers, church people and members of law enforcement who may come into contact with victims. In the workshops, they focus on how to recognize the signs of human trafficking, and how to get help.
The evidence in the Tallahassee case seems to indicate that the man arrested may be just one link in a much larger sex trafficking chain. “The arrestee is not willing to talk, but we can see it’s a pretty big case that we’ve stumbled into,” says Officer Mauricio Endara, the Tallahassee police officer who originally responded to the women’s call.
Endara said, “These people have contacts in every major city in the U.S. It’s scary. In the next year or two, you’ll probably be seeing some major headlines about these people being revealed. This guy is kind of like a drug dealer. We may have caught him, but he and the girls will be replaced by someone else pretty fast because the demand is still there.”
The Federal Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has now taken over the case. Melchor did not enter a plea at his hearing that was held January 8 at the Leon County Courthouse. His trial is scheduled for March.
Report instances of human trafficking
If you suspect someone has been trafficked, call the Department of Health and Human Services-sponsored, toll-free, 24-hour national hotline at 1-888-3737-888, or the Department of Justice-sponsored, toll-free, 24-hour Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task Force Complaint Line at 1-888-428-7581.
These hotlines will help you determine if you have encountered victims of human trafficking, will identify local resources available in your community to help victims, and will help you coordinate with local social service organizations.
How to recognize a victim of trafficking; red flags to look out for
- Living with Employer
- Poor Living Conditions
- Multiple People in Cramped Space
- Inability to Speak to an Individual Alone
- Employer Holding Identity Documents
- Signs of Physical Abuse
- Submissive or Fearful
- Unpaid or Paid Very Little
- Under 18 and in Prostitution
- Heavy security at the commercial establishment including barred windows, locked doors, isolated location, electronic surveillance. Women are never seen leaving the premises unless escorted.
- Victims live at the same premises as the brothel or work site or are driven between quarters and “work” by a guard. For labor trafficking, victims are often prohibited from leaving the work site, which may look like a guarded compound from the outside.
- Victims are kept under surveillance when taken to a doctor, hospital or clinic for treatment; trafficker may act as a translator.
- High foot traffic especially for brothels where there may be trafficked women indicated often by a stream of men arriving and leaving the premises.
Information from www.humantrafficking.org/countries/united_states_of_america/helplines
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